01.01.02 How to Use this Guide

How to Use this Guide

African Beauty and the Unforgiveness Beast has been designed to do more than provide information about forgiveness. Its purpose is to enable you to examine how you respond to offences, recognise where unforgiveness may be affecting your life and apply practical principles that can contribute to emotional freedom and healthier relationships.

The Guide combines stories, practical discussions, reflection and a series of tools that enable you to relate what you are reading to your own experiences. For maximum benefit, you are encouraged to work through the Guide sequentially rather than moving directly to selected sections.

Before beginning the main content, complete the Pre-Reading Reflection and Baseline Assessment. The Pre-Reading Reflection will enable you to consider your existing experiences, opinions and understanding of forgiveness. The Baseline Assessment will give you an opportunity to examine your current responses to offences. Together, these tools establish a useful starting point that you can revisit at the end of the Guide.

As you work through the stories and practical articles, you will encounter three types of tools: Reflection Scorecards, Self-Assessments and Action Planning Worksheets. Each serves a different but complementary purpose.

The Reflection Scorecards invite you to think more deeply about what you have read and relate the experiences, principles and issues explored in each section to your own life. Rather than simply recalling information, you will be encouraged to consider what the content reveals about your own experiences, opinions and responses.

The Self-Assessments enable you to examine specific attitudes, behaviours and practices in greater depth. Respond according to what you actually tend to think, feel or do rather than what you believe you should do. Where a Self-Assessment is scored, use the result as an aid to self-awareness rather than as a label. Pay particular attention to individual statements on which your responses indicate an area that may require greater attention.

The Action Planning Worksheets enable you to translate what you have identified through your Reflection and Self-Assessment into practical action. They will guide you to identify situations that require attention, determine what you need to do differently and decide on specific actions that you can take. Where appropriate, they will also encourage you to anticipate difficulties that could affect your follow-through and consider how you will respond to them.

The tools build on one another. For this reason, you will gain greater benefit by completing the Reflection and Self-Assessment before moving to the corresponding Action Planning Worksheet. Your responses do not need to be perfect. Their value lies in helping you identify where you are and what you may need to address.

As you reach the end of the Guide, complete the Post-Reading Reflection, End-of-Guide Self-Assessment and final Action Planning Worksheet. The Post-Reading Reflection will enable you to look back at what you hoped to understand when you began the Guide and consider what has become clearer. The End-of-Guide Self-Assessment will enable you to examine how the principles explored throughout the Guide are reflected in the way you currently respond to offences. The final Action Planning Worksheet will then enable you to draw these findings together and identify how you intend to put forgiveness into practice going forward.

Although the stories in this Guide are fictitious, the issues they illustrate are real and affect individuals, families, workplaces and communities. As you engage with the stories, avoid focusing only on what the characters did or should have done. Consider whether their experiences reveal something about situations, relationships or responses in your own life.

You may also find that particular questions bring a specific person or offence to mind. You do not need to identify that person by name when completing the tools. What matters is that you respond honestly enough to recognise what the experience may be revealing about you and what, if anything, requires attention.

Most importantly, approach the Guide with honesty and a willingness to apply what you discover. Lasting change rarely occurs through information alone. It requires us to recognise what needs attention, reconsider attitudes and responses where necessary and consistently put better practices into action.

My prayer is that as you work through the stories, principles, reflections, assessments and action plans in this Guide, you will become better equipped to recognise unforgiveness, prevent bitterness from becoming firmly established, forgive those who offend you and respond constructively when you are the offender.